Modyfying .reg file

[Wingard]

Hi! My russian isnt the best so id like to ask a question using english. is there a way to open and modify .reg files from Evil Islands without breaking them? They are not usual registry files, i can tell you that. I can open them with Notepad, but it gives many weird symbols and changing anything and saving changes changes the whole file and makes it not work afterwards.

To be honest im looking for a extactor for this type of files not because of Evil Islands but Etherlords, another game by Nival. There .reg files are used to store the informations about interface, and my goal is to create a mod which would allow to run the game in widescreen (as it does not support it at the moment and even if we try running it widescreen the interface is being displayed in the center of the screen ).

So, do you know some extractor/opener for this kind of files? I will list you few of them from Evil islands as i suppose some of you have the game installed on your pc at the moment so it may help you know which files im talking about:

config/ai.reg
res/music.reg
res/smessbase.reg
res/streamsn.reg

Any help will be appreciated

[Jet]

As i remember the format of the Etherlords .reg file is similar to the Evil Islands but with minor addition.
Can you provide an example of the .reg file?
I will check and reply.

[Wingard]

Ok, here is one file from Evil Islands (there arent many of them and they dont seem to keep any important info) and one file from Etherlords 2 im trying to get into (holds informations about game's interface).

By the way i found something here: allods2.eu/en/files/
one file's description says that it allows to convert these .reg files into .xml (openable in Notepad) and other way round but i have no idea how to use this converter. :/ It was created for yet another game from Nival, i thought it may help.

[Jet]

Can you check this tool (attached)?
Run !Encode.cmd to convert .ini to .reg

[Wingard]

Wow, it really works! I made a resource file for Etherlords 2 using EiEdit and the game does not crash.
Untortunately it seems like this reg does not contain as much informations as i was hoping for. I thought it will have placement of the textures and such (not only their names)... i guess i would have to look for these in another .reg file.

Thanks for showing interest in this, i really appreciate that. Would you be able to explain me how to convert other etherlords .reg files? Do you need me to send them to you for test or is there a program for them that you've used? (i mean the way you've converted reg files into .ini files. ive tried programs like reg2ini but with no effect, they dont accept Nival's .reg files)

[Jet]

Here is a decoder.

[Wingard]

<3

Thank you! You are my hero! I'll get to converting right away
If i will be able to succed in creating widescreen mod i will surely upload it and type link here.

[Jet]

Good luck!

[Wingard]

There is some progress already! Sort of...
[attachment=861]
I managed to move interface's panels to the bottom but i cant figure out how to move numbers and values... Also using the automatic camera is not that great, its always either too high or too low, never perfect. It looks as if it's trying to match the screen proportion considering only its width to keep the 4:3 screen ratio. :/ This would be fixable if i had acess to camera files, but Notepad shows werid stuff as always here. Im not counting for it but i guess it wont hurt to ask - Jet, you are the miracles-doer, would you happen to be able to decode .cmf (camera file) somehow? One is attached to this post.

[Jet]

Now you can play with camera file using Notepad or Excel.

[Wingard]

Oh. My. Godness.

I love you, dude! :lol: This tool will allow me to fix these stupid camera routes! Thank you!

By the way, this is how Main menu will look like:
(please dont mind the language, texts are NOT textures so the mod will NOT change the game's main menu language! )

[attachment=864]

After finishing 1366x768 version im planning also to do a 1920x1080 one, but its still long way to go from now. Nonetheless the project of it is already done.
[attachment=865]

Heres the original menu for comprasion:
[attachment=866]

[Wingard]

Alright, this is as far as i can go...
[attachment=868]

[attachment=867]

All the menus are working nicely, but the combat screen is moderately comfortable with these portraits and numbers floating in the center of it. :/ The rest of the interface is fine (buttons and spells are clickable/pushable and they interract correctly).
Second pain would be the one providing by the adventure screen. If we move our mouse too far to the right (over 800 pixels from the left border of the screen) then the game thinks we are trying to rotate the view and will not react to anything else. Moving the mouse below 600 pixels from the top of the screen has no use, the game will not react to any of our clicking).
[attachment=869]
That means the the true gameplay screen is practically equal to 800x600.


There is no way of moving portraits and values, ive tried eveything that came to my mind. The only thing remaining is cracking the .exe file, but i have no idea how to do HEX editing. :/ The game already knows how to move the values vertically (by 168 pixels), so thing would require the game thinking the first resolution (800x600) is the second one (1024x768) and then job would be halfway done. I suppose the next step would be adding some command for it to move values 566 pixels to the right, (but only these being displayed on the right half of the screen). Of course these are only my assumptions.

The only close-to-widescreen resolution the game is capable of displaying is 1024x600, but i wouldnt call it a HD one. :/

But anyway, looks like the mod wont come to life without it. D: If there is some programmer / hacker interested in helping with this issue i will gladly provide him whatever he needs (like the .exe file (i cant upload it into the post on forum), or my work on this mod so far) If not, then i guess Etherlords will never see the playable widescreen version

[Wingard]

Hey guys, i just remembered that i posted here a long while ago. I had no luck changing the .exe file myself but there was a kind soul on the widescreen gaming forum that managed to create a fix for Etherlords 2! Here is the link to the forum thread, you can find that fix there:
http://www.wsgf.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=16064

[Demoth]

Hi, Wingard!
It is an interesting topic. Can you send original files from Etherlords2_v2.7z? I need them because I want too see the differences.

[Jet]

Here is
  files.zip (Размер: 4.96 MB / Загрузок: 374)

[Demoth]

Thanks.

[Wingard]

Do you guys think that a similar fix could be done for Evil Islands? Both these games were made by the same company, maybe the .exe files arent that different from one another. Would be great to see EI in the sweet widescreen glory. Though the shop screen would probably need to be centered with black bars on the sides...
One can always dream

[Jet]

One can always dream
[right][snapback]43641[/snapback][/right]

Dreams must remain dreams.

[SomeSkull]

Hi Jet,

posting here and sending a pm afterwards - do you still have the source code of your ini2reg Encoder? I wanted to compile it for my current system, which worked perfectly for the decoder. I wanted to mod Etherlords a bit, and this was the most helpful source so far

If others are searching for it as well in the future i think attaching the .c file in this thread would be the best.

:Edit: After help from Jet - for anybody experiencing the same problem as myself (can't get ini2reg to create the .reg file) -> I simply tried to pipe the output of ini2reg into a .reg file, because we do the same with reg2ini. But ini2reg only wants one input parameter and creates the .reg file itself with the same name as the passed .ini. So in a .bat file you would simply use "Ini2Reg.exe COMBATSPELLS.ini" for example. I hope that helps

[Alfa100f]

Hey, folks!
That would be cool to modify Etherlords II. I also tried to do it myself. But unfortunately I encountered some problem. That's why I need to ask some question. Do you have any ideas on how to modify sorcery and enchantment spells (like change damage of zapp spell from 1 to 2) and also special abilities of monsters (like spiting of finguses or dispell of pteroses). Seems like this information doesn't placed in "regs.res". Do you know which file is responsible for this piece of information. And also do I have any chance to edit this file?